2014 – In the Media

2014

Oct. 11: from OceanSpaces.org

Q: How Do You Motivate Citizen Scientists to See the Value of 0?

By Michael Bear

I recently put the question out on the CitSci.org listserv, ‘How do you motivate citizen scientists to see the value of the ‘zero data’ point?’ We had a colorful and sometimes humorous series of replies back and forth from the various PIs on the list, unfortunately, not possible to summarize here (some involving unicorns and pixies) with most acknowledging the extent of this problem in the world of citizen science.

San Diego’s Ocean Sanctuaries has teamed up with National Geographic and is using an interactive tool for scientists, called Fieldscope, to monitor shark encounters in the San Diego area.

San Diego’s Newest Non-profit Aims at Ocean Conservation

June 6:

“Long-time San Diego recreational and science divers Barbara Lloyd and Michael Bear have joined forces to establish an ocean conservation non-profit organization, called Ocean Sanctuaries, devoted to species conservation, ocean sustainability as well as supporting citizen science projects and documentary films which involve the ocean.”

Medium.com: Citizen Science: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

by Michael Bear

Medium.com: “In the bad old days of ivory tower academia, only scientists with white coats and PhDs were considered qualified to gather and interpret scientific data—and, God forbid you should suggest otherwise.”

April 25: Shark data collected by citizen scientists may be as reliable as data collected using automated tools, according to results published April 23, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gabriel Vianna from The University of Western Australia and colleagues.

Editor’s Note — This piece continues with our Ocean Organization Spotlight series, which features all kinds of foundations and organizations working to protect the oceans and its inhabitants around the globe.

Ocean Sanctuaries is a new non-profit ocean conservation group founded on March 15, 2014 with a mission “to inspire people to take action around ocean conservation and habitat preservation.” To accomplish this, Ocean Sanctuaries will create a community which uses multi-media, social media, and the web as a way to educate and share information with everyone from scientists to the general public. Ocean Sanctuaries is also one of only a few NPOs primarily oriented towards ocean citizen science.